The Data Model Resource Book, Volume 3: Universal Patterns for Data Modeling

Silverston c02.tex V2 - 11/21/2008 2:58am Page 36

36 Chapter 2 ■ Setting Up Roles: What Parties Do

that is, the declarative role. We explain the patterns for the contextual roles

in Chapter 3. Another way to think of this is that declarative roles involve

setting up the role (thus, declaring it), and contextual roles involve using the

role (within the context of another entity).

An enterprise would be partially blind if it only viewed parties only as a

single role, within the context of a particular process, transaction, or event. For

example, blind spots could occur if a particular party (person or organization)

was playing a role as a customer and there was a separate entity for this without

considering that this party played other roles as well, for example, a supplier

and partner. There is a need to define roles that are declared within the context

of the enterprise as a whole. This chapter addresses this important issue.

What Is the Significance of This Type of Pattern?

Who are the people and organizations of interest to our enterprise, and how

are they related to our enterprise as a whole? These are two fundamental

questions that enterprises ask. Senior management in many enterprises wants

to manage the relationships an enterprise has with its core clients to see how it

treats people and organizations throughout the business life cycle as a whole.

It is important to capture accurately how